Rita Levi-Montalcini fought her way into medical school

Person: Rita Levi-Montalcini
Lived: 1909–2012
Field: Neurobiology
From: Italian

The story

Rita Levi-Montalcini was born in Turin in 1909, a twin and the youngest of four children in a cultured Jewish family. Her father, Adamo Levi, was an electrical engineer and gifted mathematician, and her mother, Adele Montalcini, a talented painter. In her Nobel autobiography she remembered a home full of love, but run in a Victorian style, with every decision taken by her father. He respected women, but believed a professional career would interfere with the duties of a wife and mother, so he decided that none of his three daughters would go to university.

As a teenager Rita dreamed of becoming a writer, inspired by the Swedish novelist Selma Lagerlöf. Then her beloved governess died of stomach cancer, and she resolved instead to become a doctor. At the age of twenty, she later wrote, she realised she could not adjust to the feminine role her father had in mind, and asked his permission to pursue a career. He relented.

She then faced a steep climb. Her schooling had not prepared her for university, so in eight months she made up the gaps in Latin, Greek and mathematics, passed her high school examinations and entered the medical school of the University of Turin. There she trained under the histologist Giuseppe Levi, known for his rigorous approach to science. Two of her fellow students and close friends, Salvador Luria and Renato Dulbecco, would also win the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.

In 1936 she graduated summa cum laude in medicine and surgery and began specialising in neurology and psychiatry. Within two years Mussolini's race laws barred Jews from academic careers, but the training she had fought for allowed her to keep working, first in a bedroom laboratory during the war and later for three decades at Washington University in St. Louis.

There she discovered nerve growth factor, and in 1986 she shared the Nobel Prize with Stanley Cohen. In later life she created a foundation, with her twin sister Paola, that funds university studies for young African women, extending to others the education she had once had to ask permission to receive.

Why it matters

Her determination to study medicine despite family expectations opened the way to a discovery that changed biology, and made her a lasting inspiration for women in science.

About Rita Levi-Montalcini

Italian-Jewish neuroscientist who, barred by Mussolini’s race laws, ran a secret lab in her bedroom, and later discovered nerve growth factor, winning the 1986 Nobel Prize.

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Rita Levi-Montalcini

1909–2012 · Neurobiology

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